Ruth & Naomi’s Journey

Naomi, her husband and her sons left Bethlehem because of a famine. They took their risks as immigrants in Moab. Both her sons married women from the region, Orpah and Ruth, and life was going well above average. It wasn’t home, but it was the closest thing to a home away from home that she had ever known.

Naomi’s husband died, and ten years later her two sons died. Naomi started the journey back home. Oprah went back to her hometown while Ruth decided to accompany her mother-in-law, adopting both her nation and her God.

On the journey back to Bethlehem they barely talk. Everything they now has been taken from them:their husbands, their source of income and their whole sense of stability.

It’s a journey we all have to take throughout our lives. How far must we go to be comforted, welcomed, before we find shelter and food? How far must we travel to mend our overwhelming grief? Often the distance can be great. I’m thankful that God knows the precise shape of my heart, that His spendthrift grace can make something profoundly beautiful out of all that life throws at us. C.S. Lewis says it so well: “God is our home. It is the only thing we were made for. And there are strange exciting hints in the Bible that when we are drawn in, a great many other things in nature will begin to come right. The bad dream will be over; it will be morning.”